52 Flavours
by Amber Dawn
Summary: A series of shorts focusing on Argilla for the 52flavours challenge on livejournal. DISCONTINUED. [Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner]
1. Memories of a Fallen Comrade

**Title: **Light**  
Author: **Amber Dawn**  
Fandom: **Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner**  
Theme: **#1, Five shades of white**  
Disclaimer: **Don't own, never will, events did not happen, so on.**  
Summary: **Argilla muses in Muladhara after Jinana's death. Written for the 52 flavours challenge on livejournal.

Crying about it does not change what happened. I know this. It's logical, it's normal, it's everything I've ever known. But for some reason, I cannot help but lie awake at night now, thinking of it. Thinking of her.

_Comrades_. The word echoes in my mind, twists itself around and tries so desperately to make me break. That was her last word, the last thing she ever said to me. I can so clearly see her face in my mind, even as I close my eyes, even as I stand and begin to pace around. I cannot stay in this room, I cannot sleep. Every time I close my eyes, she is there to haunt me again. Though I am sure what upsets me more is the remembrance of Heat, telling me to devour her...

A shudder, and I walk out of the barracks, climbing the stairs. Muladhara is always so quiet now. It scares me. I never noticed before, how very bland everything was. Coated in a sickening orange glow, the night watchman slumped against the elevator; I can't help but wonder why I felt this was home. Why, for so many years, have I felt that this place is where I belong.

We've all changed lately. Since the battle with the Vanguards, since that odd white light pierced our bodies. I can never describe that light, so many shades of white twisted and tangled together, shimmering as the Demonic power invaded our bodies. It was a feeling remarkably similar to what I must imagine dying to be, a cold feeling, a blank feeling. Everything slowed down in that moment, and I could feel my rifle falling from my hands. I thought I had been shot. I was sure of it... five shades of white slashing through my body and searing my flesh.

When that bastard, Mick the Slug, tossed Jinana about like a little rag doll, I felt it again. That sensation of time all but stopping. The thud of her body against the rock, the rock shattering... none of it was as loud as my heartbeat thudding against my chest.

I had finally found a friend, a confidant. Someone to whom I could relate... and she died in my arms.

Even as I take the elevator to the top level of Muladhara, looking out over a landscape of white and gray, I cannot help but think of her, and wonder how she felt when the light, that accursed light, sliced through her body so easily. White light, white-hot pain, searing white rage... I shook my head and leaned against a rock, my eyes glazed over as they traveled the landscape.

Nirvana had to exist, for surely, we live in the deepest pits of Hell.


	2. Snow

**Title:** Snow   
**Theme: **#7; Snow falling on corpses. **  
Character/Series:** Argilla/Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner **  
Rating:** PG-ish **Notes:** This theme was hard to write, due to the fact that all it ever does in the Junkyard is rain. GAH. A lot of Argilla's pieces will probably center around Jinana, and rightfully so. This piece also features Gale, another Embryon member. Written for the 52flavours challenge on Livejournal.  
**Disclaimer:** Don't own, never will, events did not happen, so on.

It was always raining in the Junkyard. Rain, rain, rain. The Rain of the Dead they called it, after the old belief of the dead rising into the clouds, falling back as this cold, dreadful rain. It was unnerving, to think of all who had died falling down on someone walking. To think of Jinana falling down around her, onto her, soaking her hair...

Argilla shook her head, slowly, and sighed. A hand lifted, tucking a strand of rain-soaked lavender hair behind one ear as she moved down the stairs, into the barracks. It was with a heavy sigh that she settled herself in the main room of Muladhara. A "war room" of sorts, she supposed, it was where Embryon did their most tactical work. It was where they planned, and plotted, and decided what to do. It was empty for now; Serph had taken Heat and Cielo aside, into one of the abandoned rooms, for some reason. Gale was most likely out in the rain somewhere, divising his plan. And so, Argilla was left alone with her thoughts.

Emotion? What was that? What were these new feelings...it made her head hurt to think about, and with a soft little noise, she lifted her hand to rub her temple. Lost in her thoughts, she didn't hear the door slip open, didn't feel the presence in the room until he spoke.

"Argilla?" A soft voice, soft and cold. Cutting. Gale. "Do you require assistance?"

She could do naught but shake her head, and sigh a moment, leaning against the wall. "No," was her simple reply. Gale simply shrugged, resting his hands on the table that took up the center of the room.

"Gale...did you ever wonder why it never snows?" she asked, after a long moment, a long moment entirely of silence. The green haired man paused, glancing over at her with a mild look of confusion.

"What is...snow?" he asked, turning to lean against the table. Argilla shrugged her shoulders, and looked off into the distance, that faraway look in her eyes so familiar now.

"I don't know. It was just a thought, floating in my mind...It's like the rain, I think, except...softer. Prettier."

Silence hung in the air again, as it often did, the sound of rain faint and far away, drown out by the footsteps of the guards in the hallway. Gale pushed off from the table, gliding to the doorway once more.

"I do not comprehend this...snow...idea. However, if it is like the Rain of the Dead...it does not matter. The Rain of the Dead falls constantly, on living and on more dead." He shook his head a little. "The rain falls on the dead, and the dead rise again to become the rain. I'd imagine if it were to...snow...it would just be--"

"Snow falling on corpses." Argilla interrupted him quietly, nodded and closing her eyes. "Morbidly beautiful."

A silent nod, and Gale was gone once more. The rain continued to pour, and Argilla was left thinking of snow sparkling in the midst of a battlefield. Much too beautiful a sight for the Junkyard...

"Perhaps it snows in Nirvana."


	3. Only Time

Title: Only Time Theme: #2, The cruelest month Character/Series: Argilla/Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner Rating: PG Notes: Argilla, in a newly changing world, contemplating time. What it is, what it means, how it all fits in. Inspired by, written to, and best read listening to Enya's _Only Time_.

Time passed slowly in the Junkyard, if it indeed passed at all. The dreary raining and the cloudy sky and the sun that never shined, not really...it made her wonder if all the events of the past happened, really, in the exact same moment. 

Argilla shook her head, turning over in her bed and staring at the door for the longest time. Or perhaps merely another half-instant. Maybe she was there for weeks on end, as the outside world bustled about. Maybe it was only the blink of an eye. A soft groan, and she sat up, bringing a hand to her forehead. All of this contemplating time was making her head hurt. 

So it was with this splitting pain in her temples that she slid quietly out of the room, careful not to wake her sleeping roommate (though she highly doubted the perky Cielo was a light sleeper), and made her way to the top of Muladhara. Rain poured down around her, soaking her loose hair, soaking through the thin nightgown she chose to wear to sleep in. 

It was here that she decided, a month had passed since the Light. A month of pain. Learning to care about people, only to have them ripped from you so soon. The cruelest month she could ever really remember. 


End file.
